RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is familiar gory fun as a standalone

Daily Mirror

4 days ago

If you're seeking a bite-sized shot of punchy 80s action distilled into a standalone first-person shooter, RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business appears set to go down a treat.
RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business marches to a familiar beat that the base game did, but shakes things up a little with a larger emphasis on shooting and even more enemy types to take down.
No modern video game translation of a cult 1987 movie had any right to be as good as the original RoboCop: Rogue City. More than a budget FPS that just slapped the 'RoboCop' name on the box, it genuinely understood the 'part man, part machine, all cop' in a way few video games (and even some movies) before it had, setting players off on a different type of shooter that did excellent justice to the character's heavier, more assertive cadence and movement style.
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Hence why it wasn't too surprising to see developer Teyon return to this world so soon, not via DLC or a full sequel, but rather a standalone expansion that aims to lock everything the first game did so well to a single tower block. The result won't blow anyone's minds, but it's hard to complain when you're gunning down thugs 80s style while Basil Poledouris' iconic score blasts in the background.
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Heading into my hour-long demo of RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business I was genuinely curious just how well this standalone story would work. The original game's narrative turned out to be one of the most surprising things about it, sitting neatly between the events of the second and third movies while offering deeper insight into RoboCop's present and past as he faces a new enemy.
Well, for better and worse, very few of these events bleed there way into Unfinished Business it seems. Instead, it elects to focus on an all-new threat that tasks RoboCop with working his way up a single tower block in the manner of Dredd 3D or The Raid to put an end to a hostile takeover.
The opening mission actually takes place outside of this OmniTower housing complex, seeing RoboCop explore a recently invaded police precinct that sees all its officers butchered. It serves as a good enough way to reintroduce the base game's unique mechanics (such as scanning and investigating) at a far slower pace than if players were immediately thrown into the action right from the off. It also does well to appropriately establish the stakes.
This prologue eventually leads to OCP's discovery of the Omnitower which has been taken over by some of Detroit's worst gangs. You as RoboCop are the only solution, and It isn't too long after that the slaughtering begins.
Much like before, the standard Auto-9 pistol is a great way to turn enemy heads into a blood splatter. Only being able to move with a heavy step and therefore a much slower pace than other FPS titles, it pays dividends to take down human enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible.
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RoboCop's armour means you can take much more of a beating, of course, yet with Unfinished Business I instantly noticed its nature to see your health deplete much faster – likely due to each floor of the OmniTower being so crowded with gangsters able to attack you from all sides.
Your move, creep
In these instances, as unnatural as it still seems, picking up a sniper, SMG, or even a Rocket Launcher and firing it at enemies is a must. Otherwise, you'll spend more time searching around stages looking for health packs as opposed to dealing out justice in RoboCop's uniquely brutal way.
Speaking of which, I was pleased to see that Unfinished Business does much to retain its 18+ rating, with blood splatters and gory deaths only ever just a few trigger pulls away. In fact, this is an expansion that doubles down on the character's immense power, thanks to all-new context sensitive finishing moves that sees the camera temporarily pull out to a third-person view. It's a small touch, but one I came to quickly appreciate.
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Also new this time around are the new flying type drone enemies, which do much to take your gaze away from merely the ground or the odd balcony when continuously gunning down cretins. When these blighters arrive it was easy to find myself having to step up my reaction times quite significantly – something that's not always easy to do given how slowly RoboCop moves by nature.
Other than these, however, much of what I was actually doing in Unfinished Business didn't vary too much from RoboCop: Rogue City. In fact, if anything, action is emphasised a lot more now, since the semi open-world sections that allowed for some semblance of investigation before were nowhere to be seen in the four chapters I played.
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In the lead up to launch Teyon has teased flashback missions where players will play as Alex Murphy prior to his cybernetic transformation. And although I wasn't able to play any of these myself, I'm genuinely curious to see how this changes the rhythm of gameplay. For now, however, my demo capped off with a sequence where RoboCop himself was bound and restricted in the tower, causing a mysterious new ally to make an ED-209 unit accessible.
Facing off against this giant, hulking bot in the base game was a true challenge. That's why actually playing as it in Unfinished Business feels immensely cathartic. Both because it wasn't possible before, yet also as stomping on thugs and blasting entire rows of floors away using rockets and turrets proves wildly destructive.
RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business is the sort of standalone expansion that does exactly what it says on the tin. Though most of its mechanics and presentation style is lifted directly from the base game that came immediately before it, the addition of new weapons, contextual finishing moves, as well as missions that change up your perspective is just about doing enough differently to help give it a unique identity.
Better yet, it's shorter runtime will directly correlate with a much cheaper price point compared to a full game, and so far it's narratively riding the line perfectly between those who have played RoboCop: Rogue City and those who have not. There's still a lot to learn about how the story will land and how the Alex Murphy missions will play out. For now, however, it's still hard to imagine any video game nailing the act of being RoboCop as well as this.